Top Gun: Hard Lock fails to deliver on the explosive potential of the movie it's named after.

It’s unclear if Top Gun: Hard Lock is trying to bring back nostalgia for the Paramount Pictures movie or be a user-friendly flight-combat simulator. Either way, it fails pretty miserably at both.

The game, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PCs, is well-intentioned in its attempts to inject kinetic, satisfying excitement into aerial dogfights with sleek, multimillion dollar killing machines. And it has no modesty (as it shouldn’t) when it tries to invoke the fun of the 1986 action classic.

After all, what child of the ’80s wouldn’t get flashes of nostalgia when, for example, you’re training with Maverick — clearly not voiced here by Tom Cruise — and buzzing your superiors with tower flybys?

A&E reporter John Wenzel has covered a variety of topics for The Denver Post over the years, including video games, comedy, music and the fine arts. He's been playing and loving video games since his dad brought home a sweet ColecoVision in 1983. Catch him on PSN as beardsandgum.

Hugh got his start writing for the Cheyenne and Woodmen Edition newspapers in Colorado Springs. In 2011 he moved to Denver where he has written for Denver Urban Spectrum and Colorado Community Media’s Wheat Ridge Transcript. Hugh joined The Denver Post in 2014 as an editorial assistant.